For my constituents with Medicare or Medicaid, please be aware you will be receiving new cards. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services are removing Social Security numbers from Medicare cards and replacing them with new identification numbers.

The new Medicare card will have a completely different and randomly assigned identifier that will be 11 characters long, containing a mix of numbers and uppercase letters. This is the Medicare Beneficiary Identifier (MBI). CMS is also removing the gender and signature line from the new Medicare card. The MBI is confidential like your SSN and should be protected as personal health information.

Each MBI is unique and randomly generated, and the characters are “non-intelligent,” which means they don’t have any hidden or special meaning.

We are excited to announce that Grow Your Own Teachers is now accepting applications for our Chicago area program, with a deadline of September 15.

Grow Your Own is a teacher pipeline program established to increase teacher diversity in Illinois public schools. GYO provides extensive support for students pursuing a career in teaching, in exchange for a commitment to teach for 5 years in high-needs public schools.

Supports that make a difference:

Financial support for tuition assistance, and when needed, emergency expenses

Academic support, with an Academic Coordinator who works with students to keep them on track to graduate

Test prep for the TAP, ACT or SAT, as well as tutoring and other support to master class subjects

Illinois legislators are taking up a measure to change the way police gather information for gang databases. It comes after more than a year of controversy surrounding the Chicago Police Department’s data collection practices.

For decades, the Chicago Police Department has kept a running list of people believed to be in one of the city’s gangs. But in the last year, questions have been raised about how the Department goes about adding names. An investigation by ProPublica Illinois showed CPD’s database is riddled with dubious and racially-skewed entries.

State Senator Patricia Van Pelt, a Chicago Democrat, says thousands of black men in their 20s are in the gang database. Many were added without warning, and that info shows up in a background check.

“If they are on that list and they have no way of getting off the list, they have no appeals process, it really tears at the fabric of the community because it can destroy people’s future.”

Records obtained by ProPublica Illinois revealed some 128,000 adults are in that database now, 70% of whom are black or 25% of whom are Latino. 11.5% of those adults are 50 years old or older, a few were listed as more than 100 years old.

State Senator Jacqui Collins (D, Chicago) is supporting the legislation. She says someone can be added to the list for something as simple as not showing up to school.

“We want to ensure police have the tools they need to fight crime, but a poorly-kept database is a blunt and ineffective tool that opens the door for many civil rights abuses,” she explained.

Sen. Van Pelt’s bill would change that, requiring the state police to inform people if they’re added to a gang database, and allow them to appeal if they believed they've been wrongly added.

The Chicago Police Department says the measure is reasonable and has pledged to make changes.

After being notified that her 17-year-old son was wanted for questioning by police, Carolina Gaete, a community organizer and activist on the West Side, brought the teen to the 10th District for what she thought would be a quick interview.

Gaete said her son, who had no criminal record and no warrant for his arrest, was held for a week in June 2016 on charges of dispatching a weapon and aggravated felony assault.

“I felt like my son was kidnapped,” Gaete said. “My son has been a restorative justice practitioner, and at 16 started reiki … My son is very peaceful.”

After proving her son’s innocence, Gaete said she submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to discover why a photo pulled from her son’s Facebook profile was used in a line-up presented to the witness who asserted his guilt.

That’s when Gaete discovered her son was listed in the Chicago Police Department’s so-called gang database as a member of the Two-Six gang. Gaete’s son wound up in the database after being reported tardy at his school, which was in Two-Six territory, by CPD officers at the school, she said.

Gaete shared her testimonial earlier this month with members of the Illinois Senate Committee on Public Health, which held a hearing April 19th at Malcolm X College. It was hosted by Sen. Patricia Van Pelt.

Van Pelt and Sen. Mattie Hunter heard testimonial from legal experts and activists, and have plans to introduce legislation within the year to reform the way police collect data.

The database is “very discriminatory,” Van Pelt said. “This is tearing at the fabric of the community.”